maxhgns

I would give myself a month. That gives you lots of time to unpack, figure out where things are in the new city (especially the cheapest grocery stores), start making new friends, and get rested up. Moving is stressful. Plus you can start getting to know the department people early.

I agree with you that location can have a big impact on general happiness, and that's very important and worth considering. Some of you have some measure of control over where you will live for the next five or more years, and that's a luxury you probably won't get ever again. I think there's a more charitable interpretation of that professor's remarks, however. The fact is that when it comes time to finding a job in academia, virtually none of us will be able to afford to discriminate geographically. That's a cold, hard fact that's best absorbed early, before having invested significant amounts of time, effort, and opportunity-cost into a PhD. If you're reasonably certain that you only want to work in a big city, or on the west coast, etc., then academia may not be for you. The job market is such that nobody can really afford to be picky. So it's important to go into the PhD aware of at least some of the realities of the academic job market, and aware that you should be cultivating a plan B. Geographic restrictions, depending on what they are, raise something of a red flag of which you should be aware, if only to save yourself future grief. Having said that, I tend to think of the fact that we won't have control over the geography of our employment as a pretty good reason to allow geography to exert some influence in the choice of school one attends for the PhD. Since you'll probably never work in Chicago, New York, LA, Toronto, Montreal, etc. anyway, the next best thing might just be to spend five or more years there as a student.

Nope. In fact, we have a student who transferred after his/her coursework elsewhere, and none of that was counted here. The student started fresh, from the ground up. With one exception: the logic requirement was considered satisfied in his/her case. Now, I'm somewhere that generally expects its students to have an MA coming in, since we're in a country where that's part of the normal progression. So it makes sense that we wouldn't usually credit MA work. But from what I gather, this seems to be the norm in most places, with tiny exceptions made for things like the logic requirement.

My suggestion to you all would be twofold: 1.) Enjoy your break. You won't have another like it for a while. 2.) If you're feeling antsy and want to do a spot of work, take a look at the progression requirements at your school, and see what you can get ahead on. If there's a language requirement, start now. If there's a logic requirement, find out what the content is (i.e. ask, and ask about textbooks), and get started on it. This is especially important if you don't consider yourself a logic whiz, because the work involved can be quite tough (not to mention time-consuming). Even just learning the elements of set theory and mathematical induction will save you a lot of pain later.

I suspect it's because we don't get much in the way education on these topics through our regular training, and we develop a big old blind spot: philosophy is intimately tied to a mythos of rationality, and we tend to think we're above explicit and implicit bias, among other things. So we turn out not to be particularly self-reflective. And, of course, when someone points out the problems with our thinking, we have the same knee-jerk responses as everybody else. I know I do. It's quoted just above your post. I think I may have lost brain cells from reading it, however. I'd best turn back to my grading instead: at least my students rot my brain at a slower pace! Curses. Sarnath'd. Ah well, now you've lost some cells too.

I'll (very briefly) step in to comment on something else: On this, you are correct (although perhaps not for the reason you think). Climate =/= weather. The temperature in some city on a given day = weather. The city's generally prevailing weather conditions = its climate. Similarly, of course--and I think this is more what you have in mind--when we're talking about global climate, there can be all sorts of variations (or not) at regional levels.

Depends on the field and the institution, but I can tell you that at my university, only about 25% of departments give their graduate students any funding, let alone full funding. Philosophy seems to be pretty unique in that most reputable departments in NA fund their students fully.

There are at least a few reasons. One, as has been pointed out, is because grad students are a relatively cheap source of high-quality academic labour (as TAs, but also as RAs, organizers of departmental events, and as participants in an intellectual climate). Another, as has already been pointed out, is that we all work a lot better when we don't have to divide our attention by having to work elsewhere. Both these reasons, however, are applicable to other academic fields that don't do nearly as much to fund their students. So why is philosophy so different? One important point of difference is that if philosophy PhDs weren't funded, there'd be virtually no incentives for students to apply (and, thus, there'd be fewer profs, fewer conferences, etc.). I mean, there aren't that many pursuits out there for which just getting any kind of job counts as winning the career lottery. Ultimately, I think it really just boils down to academic culture: for one reason or another, philosophy has resisted the move towards unfunded expansions of graduate programs.

I suspect OOO is a toxic writing sample topic.

Note that in Canada, an MA is typically required before admission to the PhD. Consequently, there's not the same culture of patching a weak or deviant (so to speak) UG with an MA as there is in the US. To be sure, they still provide an avenue for non-philosophy students to get some philosophy cred, but the point is that they view themselves and their role differently. Nonetheless, I'm with you in thinking that the OP's case doesn't seem particularly bad or "special".

Well, there's the UK. For continental there, look to Warwick. There are a few programs in Scandinavia where English is the language of instruction, but I don't think they're particularly continental. Maybe there are a couple in the Netherlands? Funding is very, very hard to come by, especially if you're not an EU resident. You'll find some PhD studentships announced on http://www.jobs.ac.uk, and others get announced from time to time on the Philos-L listserve.

It's best to go in prepared to get out, or to prepare for getting out while you're in. You don't want to be caught with your pants down

Given the state of the job market, few of you (us) will ever get a TT job in philosophy, let alone one at an institution from the top half of the Leiter rankings. The market is rough even for graduates of top schools. Remember, every school (including the top ones) graduates one or more students every year. Not every school has one or more new openings every year. You're not going to get a T25 job in philosophy. You probably won't even get a TT job in philosophy. Best get used to it now, and hope to be surprised later.

Even if he didn't assault her (remember that the standard of evidence required to prove an assault beyond reasonable doubt is very high, and typically quite hard to provide), he engaged in totally inappropriate behaviour that provides grounds not just for reprimand, but to want to be rid of him. That seems to have been the university's conclusion too.

You can certainly do that, but odds are there's no reason that's going to satisfy you. In fact, they probably haven't the foggiest clue who you are or what your file looked like. It's not like they write comments in the margins of your file. Remember, you were one among hundreds of applicants.

You could just ask your advisor...

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

I don't really have a horse in this fight (I did my UG in history/continental, but have moved into the analytic camp since my MA), but I'll say a couple small things. First, I think that SHP put her point too strongly in her last post: at the very least, Marx and Foucault have (had) things to say that are more than trivially useful (even to analytically oriented political philosophers), and aren't just obscurantist BS. I can't really speak to the others on the list, never having read them (save Derrida in an UG course on literary theory, and I thought he was full of it). Second (here comes some nitpicky pedantry): I don't think it's at all right or fair to characterize analytic philosophy as a science. It may perhaps aspire to have that status, but it's still philosophy: the bulk of its subject matter can't be empirically investigated, and there's not much to be had by way of falsifiability either. The methodology is not insignificantly different, either. Third, while I do think that there are useful areas of overlap, I don't think they're quite as broad as was suggested by Monadology in the other thread. Frankly, I don't think that Heidegger (for example) has much to offer metaphysics--certainly not contemporary metaphysics. And I'm similarly unconvinced about the figures listed for metaethics and epistemology. But that doesn't mean that their work is worthless (although in some cases, I'm tempted to say it is), or that their methodology is useless. It's just a fact about those figures and their ideas not fitting well with the state of those subdisciplines. One thing that worries me (just a nagging worry, not an existential one) is the role we ascribe to the history of our discipline (and historical figures). One thing I've noticed, over the course of my education and subdisciplinary transition, is that "continental" philosophy seems to have a much closer relationship to (or even a claim over) the history of philosophy (particularly since Spinoza/Kant). I guess it worries me because I have a hard time disentangling the historical and contemporary components when I mix with "continentalists". How much of what they say/write is intended as historical scholarship, and how much is a substantive claim about some (non-historical) subject? To the extent that it's the former, I don't worry at all (except insofar as I'm uncertain what role I think the discipline should accord to history). To the extent that it's the latter, I worry because that seems like precisely the extent to which one should be conversant with contemporary work that's done in both traditions.

Nicely threadjacked, everyone.

I know others have said what I'll say, but I'll reiterate it anyway: I don't think there is a way for you to do that beyond asking current students and faculty yourself. It's worth pointing out that you should probably ask as many people as you can (not just, e.g., the two women at Rochester)--simply because it's worth getting a sense of how aware other students are of what's going on. I'm probably not being as clear as I intend, so here's an example. Suppose there are 12 students, and 2 are female. Now suppose that those women report a bad climate. No matter what, that's probably a place to avoid, then. But if all 10 male students also tell you the climate's not good for women, that might give me some hope that things will improve in the near future, since my prospective immediate colleagues seem aware of the situation (and thus, hopefully, less prone to exacerbate it). On the other hand, if they all think things are hunky-dory, then that indicates that the department's climate problems are operating under the departmental radar. Like I said, it's probably not the case you'd want to attend a place like either of those described. But I could imagine the difference being salient to decision-making.

Me too. I've taken an inexplicable (given my distaste for his work) number of graduate courses on Hegel at this point, and I have to confess that I still don't really understand what's going on. At least, I don't feel like I do, for the most part. I think I understand the lectures on fine art well enough, but they're total bunk (except for chapter 3). I should confess that much of my reception of Hegel was influenced, early on, by my love of Schopenhauer. Years later, however, I still can't shake the intuition that Hegel just pretended to make sense, and the real importance of his work is to be found in the work (/interpretations) of those who came after him instead.

In Canada, rape is not a legal category. It's classified under sexual assault. I don't know whether that holds true for the state of Illinois.

Can they even legally drop him, if the contract's signed?

...what was going on in Religious Studies?

I applied to five schools. By my own assessment, I fit three of them like a glove, and the other two were poor fits (I thought of them as safeties even though they were high-ranked departments). I got into 3/5, and they were the glove's three fingers. I have no evidence to offer in favour of fit, but I also don't think it's an accident that I was accepted where I was accepted. There's no doubt that interests change as one progresses through the PhD. I'd done an MA already, and was certain about my AoI--and it's still my AoS, although my surrounding interests have changed significantly (away from history and towards LEM). But I still fit into my department really well. I gladly took and happily audit a wide range of courses, can fill out pretty much any TA slot, and can just generally contribute to all sorts of aspects of departmental life. Our grad student body isn't particularly clique-y precisely because incoming students are chosen for their fit. And I'm really happy here. "Fit" seems to quantify over all those kinds of factors (plus over opportunities in cognate fields, certificates/options, and interdisciplinary awards), and my experience here leads me to believe that it really does make a huge difference to a department's quality of life, and a student body's cohesion. I know a few people who went to departments that were poor fits, and their experiences seem to have been pretty miserable. Whether that was due to fit or other issues, I can't say. But I do think fit had an important role to play. So there you have it. It's not much, but it's my data point.